Chapter 24 of Between Two Deaths (the end)

Coincidence? When he thought about it later, it’s right after that collective thought went breathing through them that the train came back almost to their starting point. Almost. One morning that they certainly no longer expected it, the train re-entered recognizable France, passed near Dijon, Mâcon, then Auxerre; rushed through the suburbs, slowed down and entered Paris, finally dropping them on a nondescript dock at Gare du Nord.

The fantastically elastic, multidimensional universe in which they’d traveled for what felt like an entire life flattened, narrowed and gave way to a sedentary, grounded, almost predictable reality. It was as if they were back into their life before … Almost, not quite.

When screens, cocoons and toilets showed “Final destination: Gare du Nord,” everyone was convinced it was a joke or a trap, and that the return to Paris would evaporate like the rainbow when one gets too close to it. Collective, objective illusion, it’s called. But, on the contrary, once at a standstill, the train told them to walk out, step down, and did not give them the choice. “Last stop!” Then it manifested even more clearly that it no longer accepted passengers by opening wide its doors and closing and locking behind them in the loudest pneumatic sound.

Out! Emmanuel had the sensation that the train snorted and hissed like a recalcitrant pack of horses.

The suburban pavilions, the buildings around and then inside Paris had been recognizable. The outer suburbs hardly more run down than before. Inside Paris, buildings near the tracks had always been covered by graffiti and degraded. What astonished the compartment the most was that activity in the train station appeared all but normal. People were walking pensively to their train, the controllers were answering questions, there were long kisses, and friends gave their last advice. One young person waited for a traveling friend who did not come.

There was no army of zombies about to eat them up. The billboards, commercials and giant screens were readable and written in good French. They were no longer in 2029 or 2030. They were not far from the year 2019, and that reassured Emmanuel.

But how far?

It was like coming out of the world of the dead; but, perhaps, to enter another … They hesitated a long time before stepping down from the footboard. And if the red asphalt of the wharf were to engulf them? What if the cool attitudes of the natives were merely an optical illusion, yes, like the rainbow, objective illusion, shared by whoever sees it from a distance — illusion, nevertheless, which dissipates when one gets closer.

After the law student, the teenager, her brother, their mother, Michael and George had stepped down safely, Emmanuel helped Mercedes down and followed suit. Once on the platform, which was solid under his feet, he walked as fast as the crowd allowed.

He had not been able to communicate with Alicia in the last 24 hours. But once in the huge hall he was glad to see emboldened groups arriving from other platforms. All the super TGVs were disgorging their passengers at the same time. It was an extraordinary moment. People stood transfixed, then ran, then stood transfixed again; children clapped their hands and the young stamped their foot when the crowd didn’t let them move fast enough toward each other.

In case they were back in France, Emmanuel had agreed with his wife to meet at the landmark café Les Deux Magots. There was a quiet esplanade and a small public garden running along the cobble-stones. You could not miss this elegant terrace in front of the old Saint-Germain church.

He would have liked to say goodbye to his fellow passengers, especially George, with whom he hoped to keep in touch, but he did not succeed, everyone was already running in the direction of his past, including George just a few strides ahead of him.

And what of Michael? Emmanuel looked back. Everyone ran, pressed, pushed, except Michael, who’d evaporated the moment their compartment and all the others scuttled along the corridors, stepped down lively, to clog and agglomerate on the quay.

Grave question, paralyzing problem suddenly: they’d written to him that their confiscation occurred in 2020, a year after his. But what if the trains, returning together, returned in the year 2019, that is, before their confiscation, what would happen? Would there be two Alicias and Isabels, one pair stepping out lively off a train, and one still at their friends’ les Délébris, who lived rue Monge, 5ème Arrondissement, where the three had stayed as guests in July of 2019. Emmanuel’s confiscation had occurred on the 15th.

He found the time in the big hall: 10:33am. And on a screen that gave train schedules, he read that it was July 15, 2023. Only four years to the day after his confiscation.

He breathed.

Soon it would be noon. Time for lunch.

What if he could have lunch with his wife and his daughter?

Of course, the subway tickets in his pocket were worthless. On the other hand, the metro turned out to be the same good old Parisian metro, same bitter-sweet smell of machinery and human sweat. Problem, he had to flash a card or a mobile phone in front of the pneumatic door and Emmanuel did not have a mobile phone or a current credit card. The machine distributing this card required a certain amount in euros that also had to be paid with a credit card or a mobile phone. Typically French, Emmanuel thought. Nothing has changed. One must already be part of their system before arriving.

It would have been easy to ask the question of how to get the card that’d allowed him to buy the other cards. But Emmanuel hesitated to address the Parisians who came and went under the vast hall of the train station, and especially officials in their booths. It bothered him to have to ask trivial (for them, he assumed) questions. Where did he come from if he didn’t know that and spoke nonetheless French like a Frenchman? Prison, some institution? For those who’d not gone through the confiscation, what could he tell them that would not sound delusional?

Of course, Emmanuel spoke French like them (language does not change so quickly), but he had gone through the mill, lost everything, including lost touch with hard reality — and not them. He was not as old as if he had lived the four years between 2019 and 2023. France had aged a notch and not him, not as much. He’d been struggling with various degrees from mild to acute anxiety all through the confiscation, meanwhile eating and drinking well, indulging, and yet he verified in the mirror of the public bathrooms that his face didn’t look fatter or more fatigued. On the contrary, he was in better shape than before and had lost weight.

What did he know, actually, about the French people around him? They had probably returned just a little earlier. He should talk to someone.

There was a line of driverless taxis, Emmanuel hesitated and ended up signaling a taxi driver down the boulevard. He wanted to talk to someone.

Soon enough, it was clear that the man took Emmanuel lightly, which was unnerving. Okay, Emmanuel had been confiscated and forced to travel all over Europe in a super mega TGV with alcoves and cocoons on demand, and so what? Emmanuel had been catapulted four years ahead during a much longer amount of time spent in a parallel world. Okay. Why not? The driver had no objection. This story sounded way off once told like that, but the driver did not mind and believed it precisely because it sounded off. Emmanuel’s life was rather enviable, considering.

“Anything’s possible, nowadays,” said the driver. “It’s not like it was before. I pity those who have to imagine scripts for horror movies, you know, Hollywood, now that day to day reality is far worse than their worst invention. You hear funny stories when you work the taxi, and they’re all true.”

Emmanuel could have discussed the point with this driver-philosopher; but he wanted to see his wife and daughter. And take a good look at Paris, the façades of chiseled stones, the monuments, the symmetrical avenues, the ancient river Seine, the majestic bridges… at first sight, nothing had changed.

It was as beautifully old as ever.

He spotted the venerable and as always opulent café Les Deux Magots down the Boulevard Saint Germain. He did not know how he was going to pay the taxi. His few euros had vanished during the trip, probably when entering the van. In general, Alicia had it easier than him with money. If she’d been sitting with Isabel enjoying the terrace of Les Deux Magots, it meant she had found a way to access their old accounts … Maybe in this slightly advanced world they have respect for the confiscated, banks go as far as recuperating for them their assets. Maybe.

He jumped from the taxi and they were there. They were standing next to a small round table and Emmanuel had the depressing feeling of having to ruin this extraordinary moment because of the taxi driver, who claimed his 35 euros (plus tip) loudly. It had become really expensive, a taxi driver with whom to talk in Paris.

As though he were in a dream, Alicia was half-smiling and that meant she had found a way to their money; only, the money they had in 2019 was worth much less now. Emmanuel read all this in the eyes of his wife.

Alicia paid the driver in the back of Emmanuel.

He burst into tears upon seeing Isabel’s big black eyes in her bloodless face. Poor little girl, how scared she’d been for them three!

He collapsed at their little table, then got up, effusive, hugged Isabel against him and Alicia in turn. He’d never been able to express adequately his feelings, to find words and caresses enough. He kissed them on the cheeks, in their hair. All three were crying and laughing, and crying more.

They were the same but they had changed. Despondent, ravaged faces trying too much to smile.

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Where are we going now?”

Alicia brought out a thin device folded in her pocket like a handkerchief. It reposed on her ear like a gauze while she phoned their old Parisian friends the Délébris.

There was no answer. Insisting through various services in his good French, Emmanuel got the voice of a machine asking him the password to a network where the Délébris subscribed years ago. Why this past tense? Presumably before their confiscation. If only he had that password. Perhaps their hosts had thought about leaving a message before they could no longer.

Emmanuel passed the moveable fabric to Alicia, who gave the phone to Isabel, who searched for signs of the Délébris on the Cloud and on Earth. They had evaporated, like Michael. And not yet returned.